VP Mike Pence, asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if the the U.S. was slow in reacting to the coronavirus outbreak: "The reality is we could have been better off if China had been more forthcoming."

— Peter Nicholas (@PeterAtlantic) April 1, 2020

China lied about their numbers.

Ohhh, I am so mad. The local stores have been out of toilet paper for four weeks. I asked why they didn’t restock in greater quantities; the stockers said their shipments had been calibrated to China’s Numbers. Health care workers don’t have protective gear – turns out our Strategic National Stockpile was downsized according to China’s Numbers. Hospitals, facing immediate bankruptcy, are forced to reduce physician pay and furlough staffers – a key component of their annual budget hinges on, what else, China’s Numbers.

Turns out China’s Numbers are a lot like LIBOR, a reference rate that serves as a keystone for the entire economy. The US Surgeon General, CDC, World Health Organization, are still advising us not to wear masks. Mask effectiveness models undoubtedly based on China’s Numbers.

The medical community made — interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected. –Dr. Deborah Birx, Deep State Department

This is stupid, but remember Russia? They spent a few rubles buying Facebook ads in 2016, and set off a butterfly effect that hacked our election, undermined democracy, and placed a Putin puppet in the Oval Office.

Initially, no one believed the DNC’s excuse that Russia had thrown the election. Even Mark Zuckerberg said the idea was crazy. But a constant drumbeat of establishment figures chanting nonstop about Russian hackers and Russian disinformation campaigns, and anyone who disagreed was accused of being a Russian shill. It turns out if you bleat nonsense for long enough, people… well, people still aren’t dumb enough to believe it, but they’ll accept it. They’ll pretend to see the Emperor’s clothes to avoid being canceled.

So even Trump had to play along, acknowledge the Russia narrative.

Anyone could appreciate the value of having a general-purpose scapegoat. Vermont’s power grid went down – blame Russia! Yahoo suffered a major data breach – definitely Russian hackers. Experian loses everyone’s social security number – Russia again!

If China didn’t exist, we’d blame Iran for lying about their numbers. Or Russian disinformation campaigns.

The real victims in all of this are not the COVID-19 patients who will die, but the journalists hoodwinked by public health officials. Excuses are now acceptable substitutes for results. After multiple generations of rewarding failure, we’ve come to believe that everything will be fine as long as we can blame someone for our oppression.

And maybe this works in the West. Maybe if the virus had originated in Germany, we could cry foul and demand another century’s worth of reparations. But it didn’t, and we can’t. Strange, that the Marxist countries that celebrated class struggle refuse to recognize our victimhood.